Monday’s Observation and Today’s Class Discussion

Once again, not too much happened at the junior high on Monday. I walked in to find another substitute teacher, so the lesson plan was changed a little. The class started a new unit in which they will study Africa south of the Sahara desert. She first introduced the unit by having the class look at different maps of Africa to help them to better understand the economy, countries, and landscape of the region. Students spent the majority of the class time reading the first two chapters which talked about the topographical features of the region. They did so by students reading aloud each section. After reading each section, the teacher asked students about the reading to emphasize important ideas. When they had finished reading the two chapters, the students answered more questions about Africa using their atlases, such as the largest island, the three tallest mountains, the deepest lake, and the three longest rivers. During this time, I was able to walk around and help the students who were having trouble completing their assignment. They were asked to turn their worksheets in at the end of the period, which somewhat forced them to do some work while the students had a substitute. Once again, the students had a lot of trouble behaving well with a substitute, but they all managed to finish and turn in their worksheet.

In class today, we talked about high-stakes testing, as well as the legal part of teaching. Some of the legal issues that we talked about were shocking, such as the possibility of a teacher being fired because of his sexual orientation or having a baby out of wedlock. These social issues don’t seem to have any influence on the effectiveness of a teacher. These legal issues affect how we teach and what we teach. I agree with many of the students in our class that these legal rights and responsibilities were very vague. I also found it interesting that this reading selection states that tenured teachers can be fired. Although they can, it takes a lot in order to do so. Although tenure is a very important for teachers in regards to job security, it can also be detrimental to the students. From my experience, some (only a small percentage) of my tenured teachers disrespected their students and weren’t motivated to teach. Although this is a horrible thing to happen in the classroom, I still believe that tenure is very important. Reading this selection left me very afraid for my future as a teacher. It seems as though teachers can be fired very easily or not offered tenure. It scares me so much that even in the teaching profession there isn’t job security. These readings were a huge wake up call about the importance of having knowledge about the legal rights and responsibilities of teachers. I plan to learn more about this before I begin teaching. On another note, we got our philosophy of education papers back today. I was surprised how well I did on the paper because I had a lot of trouble finishing it. I plan on improving it over the semester.